Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

New donors, volunteers and other potential supporters have questions that they want answered before taking the next step with your organization. These five simple but universal questions that people will have about your organization are best answered not with statistics or wonky program statements, but with stories. Your website is the perfect place to answer these questions.

1) What Do Other People Think About This Group?

Answer with Testimonials. When someone is learning about you for the first time, they’ll be curious what other people think about your organization, your staff and your effectiveness. You can talk about how great you are, but that’s not nearly as convincing as testimonials from other people who aren’t on your payroll (or even on your board). Testimonials are short quotes — little mini-stories — that offer insight into why someone is happy to be associated with your organization in one or two sentences. Gilda’s Club Seattle includes testimonials and photos at the top of nearly every page on its site that instantly convey how important the group is to its supporters.

2) Are People Here Like Me?

Answer with Profiles. When someone donates time or money to your organization, they are joining a virtual community of people who believe in the same cause. If someone is not quite sure if your nonprofit is a good fit for them, showing them that they fit in with other supporters can help overcome that barrier. Profiles of clients, donors, volunteers, members, and other supporters are a good way to show the different kinds of people who are involved with your group, making a newcomer feel more comfortable that they are in the right place. Iraq Veterans Against the War lets members write their own profiles as part of the open, online membership directory.

3) Does This Work?

Answer with Success Stories. Do you get the job done? Are you going to make a difference with the money I give you? Success stories show donors (and potential new donors) exactly what it is you do and how you do it. They can be full-length articles or shorter vignettes like those on the National CASA website. The multimedia stories on the home page show the children they serve and their adult court-appointed advocates speaking about the benefits of the CASA program. These stories end with this simple statement: “Children with a CASA volunteer are less likely to reenter Child Protective Services.” Does it work? Yes, it does.

4) What Difference Can a Single Person Make?

Answer with Personalized Giving Options. Big problems are overwhelming. If you swamp people with the enormity of the need, they are likely to tune you out and move on to something that feels more manageable. One way to overcome this problem is to focus on the difference that a single person can make and clearly demonstrate through storytelling that a new donor, as a single individual, can bring about change by supporting your organization. Tying donor actions or gift levels to specific results is a great way to do that.

Kiva and Donors Choose are the shining stars in this category. CARE’s “I Am Powerful” campaign also makes a clear yet less direct connection between individual donors and the people they are helping.

5) Can I Come Along?

Answer with Personal Chronicles. For your supporters to fully engage with your nonprofit, you have to be willing to share what’s really going on. A small but important segment of your donor base won’t be happy with the level of detail they get in your newsletters. They’ll want more and you should give it to them. Blogs are a natural way to provide this kind of ongoing, detailed, behind-the-scenes narrative about your work.

The Humane Society of the United States’ dispatches from the Canadian seal hunt are riveting (although brutally graphic). It’s one thing to ask supporters to put a “Save the Baby Seals!” bumper sticker on their car — it’s another to invite them to tag along virtually with the HSUS’s Rebecca Aldworth as she chronicles the bloody devastation on the ice floes day in and day out. A more heart-warming example can be found on the Interplast blog, where doctors chronicle their efforts around the globe to repair birth defects like cleft lip.

In both cases, these nonprofits are taking their supporters to places they would likely never physically go themselves, showing them in detail both the need for their support and what can be done with their donations and advocacy. By bringing your supporters along day in and day out, you can make them feel like they really are part of your team.

While storytelling is a wonderful tool for nonprofit marketing, it only works with a specific goal in mind. What point are you trying to make? Or in these cases, what question are you trying to answer? Without a goal behind your story, the words may be interesting or amusing, but the point will be lost on your supporters. Know what question you are answering before you start telling your story for maximum impact.

Learn More Here: Nonprofit Storytelling: How to Write Your Nonprofit’s Best Stories

How many of these situations sound familiar to you?

•    People call your nonprofit all the time asking for assistance on issues you don’t really work on, because they are confusing your organization with another one in town.
•    You don’t have an “elevator speech” because it’s just too hard to explain what it is you do in 30 seconds.
•    You have trouble finding your own organization’s table at a community festival, because your banner and materials blend in with everyone else’s.
•    When your board members talk to potential new donors about the work you do, it sounds as though they are describing a completely different organization than the one you work for.

In all of these cases, your organization is being confused with others, overlooked or misunderstood.  Why?  It’s often because you have no real “brand” — no clear organizational identity, reputation, or single thing that you are best known for.

On the other hand, when you do have a strong brand, people can immediately explain who you are and what you do and can pick you out of the crowd. They are more willing to donate to you and volunteer, because they “get it” — and can easily explain it to their friends and family. Wouldn’t you rather be in that situation than the ones above?

I’m hosting a conference call this Thursday (April 10) at 3:00 p.m. Eastern (Noon Pacific) with nonprofit branding expert Nancy Schwartz, who many of you know from her fabulous blog at GettingAttention.org.  Nancy is going to share all kinds of great tips on nonprofit branding and explain exactly what you need to do to get your nonprofit’s brand in shape, so you can put the confusion and obscurity behind you.

Registration for the call is only $20, and includes as many people as you can gather around the speakerphone in your office. This would be a great time to bring in a few board members for lunch, listen to the call together, and then discuss the state of your brand!

Get the details and register here.

The days when your nonprofit could get away with not having an online marketing strategy are over. Even the smallest or most locally based organizations are expected to use email and have some kind of website (or at a minimum, a web page on another organization’s umbrella site). And most nonprofits should be doing much, much more than that.

If you’ve been approaching online marketing in a piecemeal fashion, I recommend the following five-step approach to start pulling together a real nonprofit marketing strategy. (You can learn more about online marketing and this strategy for nonprofits during this week’s “Online Marketing Basics” webinar.)

1. If Your Website Sucks, Fix It. Here’s my 10-Point Basic Website Checklist for Nonprofits. Make sure your website passes on all ten points before worrying about anything else. Don’t have your own domain? They are dirt cheap. Get one now. No excuses.

2. Build Your Email & RSS Lists Everywhere, All the Time. The two best ways right now to communicate directly with your supporters online are through email and through RSS feeds. Learn more about RSS at TechSoup. Yes, there are other ways to reach people online, such as through social networking sites, discussion lists, and text messaging. But email and rss are going to reach the overwhelming majority of people. These lists are easy to manage and easy for your supporters to join and leave (if you have them set up correctly).

3. Create Tools and Great Content for Your Biggest Fans. The beauty of online marketing and Web 2.0 is that it is so easy for friends to pass info on to other friends. You can build your network of friends of friends of supporters of your organization incredibly fast online. But that means you have to identify the “influencers” or “patrons” in your network — your biggest fans — and give them the tools they need and the information that excites them, so they’ll pass it on. This is what Seth Godin calls “Flipping the Funnel.”

4. Dip into Social Media, But Dive into One Tool. Yes, social media is all the rage. You’ve got everything from Facebook Causes and Care2 to Digg and Flickr. It’s impossible to be everywhere in any kind of meaningful way. At the same time, social media is the new web, and you need to be a part of it in some way, if only to understand what others are doing. Pick one or two social media or social networking sites and dive into those. Learn how to use them and become a part of those communities.

5. Measure, Learn, and Adjust. Return on Investment (ROI) for social media is a hot topic right now and the best ways to measure success are still to come. But one of the great aspects of online marketing is that measurement is built right into most of the tools. You can tell how many people are subscribed to your e-newsletter and RSS feeds. You can tell how long people are staying on your website. Keep track of what you can, learn from both your successes and your failures, and adjust your strategy over time.

Learn more during the Online Marketing Basics webinar.

If you were starting from scratch, how would you spend an annual budget of just $1,000 to market your nonprofit online?

Let’s say you have a computer with the basic Microsoft Office package and you have a high-speed Internet connection. But that’s it.

Here’s how I would spend the money. Let me know how you would spend it by leaving a comment (if you are reading this via email or in a reader, click on the title to go to the blog).

$150 — to register a domain name and pay for decent web hosting for a year, with a dedicated IP.

You can get cheaper hosting, but these days it’s worth a little extra to get a “business” package with your own dedicated IP address so you aren’t sharing one with a spammer site. I personally use GoDaddy and Apollo Hosting, but there are certainly plenty of other reliable companies out there. See “A Few Good Web Hosting Providers” by Idealware.

Install Wordpress or some other open-source content management system/blogging software. See “A Few Good Tools to Manage Content on Simple Sites” by Idealware. (Yes, Idealware is my go-to site for tech recommendations.)

$300 — to pay a web designer to customize a free/cheap Wordpress template for your website/blog and a free e-newsletter template.

A little professional design help can go a long way in making free templates look like they were designed just for your organization. The templates I use for both this blog and NonprofitMarketingGuide.com were purchased from TemplateMonster and customized. Your email newsletter provider (who you’ll hire in just a second) will also provide lots of free templates that your designer can spiff up.

$300 — to get an annual plan with an email marketing service.

This lets you send out regular e-newsletters and timely e-blasts. $300 will let you email a list of around 2,500, so you have plenty of room to grow from zero. They will also give you the code to put an email newsletter sign-up box on your website. Your web designer can help you insert the code if you can’t figure it out. I email to lists mostly out of my shopping cart system, but I also use iContact. Here is another Idealware article: A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools.

$200 — to buy a decent point-and-shoot digital camera.

Great photos of real people working with your organization on its mission are incredibly valuable. Use photos on your website, in your email newsletters, and on your social networking sites (those are free). Your camera will come with basic photo editing software.

$50 — to spend on a little training.

Figure out where your biggest skill gap is and fill it with either an affordable webinar or a how-to book. Skills to work on include writing for the web (see 4/24/08 webinar), email newsletters (see 3/30/08 webinar), HMTL/PHP (so you can trouble-shoot your site and newsletters), basic digital photography and photo editing (so you can work with your images), as well as nonprofit marketing in general (start with “Robin Hood Marketing“).

Spare Change — spend on stock photography credits.

If you are under-budget anywhere, spend a few bucks buying credits for stock photography to fill in where you don’t have good photos of your own. I love istockphoto.

That’s it! How would you spend the $1K?

P.S. I’m teaching a webinar on April 2 on online marketing basics for nonprofits.

I read an interesting political article in Newsweek yesterday called “When It’s Head versus Heart, the Heart Wins” that has tons of parallels for nonprofit marketing.

All of the campaign gurus agree — people are drawn to candidates who “assuage fear, inspire hope, instill pride or bring some other emotional dividend.” It’s more important what people feel than what they think, thus the facts don’t really matter all that much. This explains why so many people seem to vote against their own economic self-interest.

According to the article, anxiety does push people to seek out new information about candidates. Unease moves people to find ways to feel more comfortable. If someone is anxious about terrorism, they’ll pay attention to which candidate has the best plan to make them feel safer. But enthusiasm has the opposite effect - it closes voters’ minds to new information. Their hearts have been won over, so there’s no need for the brain to process more data. Candidates just have to keep ‘em feeling good.

Katya Andresen also blogged on emotions that motivate this week when she recounted a recent post by Seth Godin. Seth contends that people act based mostly on three emotions: fear, hope, and love. Katya cautions nonprofits about overdoing the fear angle and instead advocates the hope and love angles.

Based on the Newsweek article, I’d add pride to hope and love. Can your make potential donors feel genuine pride in themselves by giving to your organization? What is it about helping your nonprofit specifically that could make someone swell and gush? If you can work it out in a way that feels genuine, you can probably chuck a lot of your fact-based marketing materials.

Personal identity is also huge in politics and in nonprofit marketing.

The article also talks about how it’s important that a voter identify with a candidate at the gut level. It made me crazy when I heard people say they were voting for George Bush because he was the kind of guy you could have a beer with, but this is exactly why. The article mentions the identity conflict for black women voters this year — do they identify themselves first as a woman (and thus vote for Hillary) or first as an African-American (and vote for Barack)? And Hillary’s choked-up moment? Women her age completely identified with what she was saying and feeling and could see themselves reacting the same way under that intense pressure. They came back around in big numbers for Hillary in New Hampshire, even though a lot of them had been in line for Obama Hope Train tickets before she almost cried.

Newsweek also mentions a study I found really interesting. Personal identity is so important to action that Asian girls who were asked to identify their gender on a math test didn’t do as well (because girls can’t do math, right?). But when they were asked to identify their ethnicity, they did much better (because Asians are good at math).

Can you tap into the personal identity of a segment of your supporters and make a firm link to your organization? Describe what it is like to be in their shoes and then see if you can find a natural connection to your organization. “I am a (describe the person’s demographics) and therefore supporting (fill in your organization) feels entirely natural to me because (explain how it reinforces the person’s identity).”

Remember that series of posts I did (here all on one page) on the University of California’s direct mail makeover? This connection to personal identity is exactly why, after getting that mailer, I gave to Cal for the first time since I graduated. The internal dialogue went like this: “I am a (creative, independent firebrand) and therefore supporting (Cal) feels entirely natural to me because (Cal nurtures and graduates innovative, free-thinking people). The fact that I’m an alumnae puts me in the target audience, but that alone was not enough to inspire me to give, because I don’t really consider going to Cal part of my core personal identity. This exercise isn’t easy and you’ll need to play around with it, but it’s worth giving it some serious thought.

And what about those people who are already enthusiastic supporters? That’s much easier. Just keep feeding their hearts, and don’t worry so much about their heads.

Claire Meyerhoff

Last month, Claire Meyerhoff called to interview me about nonprofit storytelling for some articles she is working on, and we ended up having an hour-and-a-half chat about how hard it is for so many nonprofits to get press coverage, even though they have such great stories to tell.

We shared all kinds of theories about why this is true, and one of Claire’s points was really on target: Nonprofits need to cut the bull! Blathering on about your wonky mission statement, the infinitely deep root causes of a problem, and the complicated system-wide solutions required just doesn’t work for print reporters who need to think in terms of hundreds of words, not thousands, and TV journalists who can give you only 30 seconds of airtime.

I was so impressed with Claire’s down-to-earth perspective that I asked if she’d be interested in doing a teleseminar with me. Then she told me a bit more about her history and I couldn’t wait to host this event.

If you can spare $20 for some great media training, here’s where you should spend it:

Getting Reporters to Cover Your Nonprofit: How to Tell Your Story So They’ll Tell It Too!

It’s next week’s Nonprofit Marketing Guide teleseminar (in other words, it’s a toll-free conference call) on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Gather ’round the speaker phone — as long as you are all from the same organization, $20 buys training for your whole staff.

Here’s what you should know about Claire, and why I was so eager to introduce her to all of you. Claire is a communications professional who has spent twenty-something years spreading the word with no muss and no fuss. As a news writer in CNN’s Washington bureau, she took complex stories and honed them into :30 worth of copy fit for Judy Woodruff and Wolf Blitzer. She also helped the National Safe Kids Campaign make the CBS Evening News — and I’ll have her share the story about why that wouldn’t have happened if she had done what the “higher ups” wanted her to do.

She has also reported on Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath on XM Radio’s “Red Cross Radio” channel, and she wrote and narrated an award-wining video for Ronald McDonald House of Durham, NC. Simply put, Claire gets nonprofits and on Wednesday, she’ll help you get the media.

I’m calling this a “Hot Seat” interview, which means I’ll spend the first 15-20 minutes of the hour-long call peppering Claire with some good, tough questions. Then it’s your turn. You can submit questions in advance and during the teleseminar via email to ask AT hotseatquestions.com or send them in via AIM to hotseatquestions.

Get the details and register for the teleseminar now.

Melissa Eckes, a senior at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Wisconsin, sent me a message this week asking for ideas on how a local public awareness campaign could increase support for funding arts education in public schools. She’s writing her thesis on the importance of art education and wanted my advice, and yours, on how to create a powerful campaign message.

Do have any thoughts you can share with Melissa? Leave a comment on this post if you want to help. You’ll find my suggestion below.

Here’s what Melissa says about the benefits of arts education:

“My idea is creating an public awareness campaign for art education in the Milwaukee school area. A lot of the research I have been doing is finding articles and interesting facts about the benefits of art education. How it helps you be creative and teaches you self-discipline, which is important to many careers today. I understand that when schools are in money troubles, the first thing they cut is art programs. I’ve found that there’s only national advertising for saving art education, and I want to do something local to be more effective.”

One idea I shared with Melissa is to use the power of the unexpected. If you are are talking about art education in schools, use adults instead of kids and more left-brained imagery (less artsy) than right-brained (more artsy). I suggested using images of analytical professionals with tag lines that talk about how arts education helped them get where they are today.

For example, an ad could picture a surgeon with text like “Top brain surgeon. Moves a scalpel with precision. Learned to control his hands that way with a paintbrush in fourth-grade art class.” Then you could include a stat or two about the value of arts education, followed by a strong call to action — whatever the campaign wanted people to do, whether that’s asking the school board to restore funding for the arts or whatever.

What else could Melissa’s arts education campaign try?

One the biggest challenges organizations face when trying to improve their nonprofit marketing programs is to stop thinking about themselves and to focus on their audience instead.

One analogy I use in my nonprofit training courses is gift giving. With the holidays still in our short-term memories, you’ll recognize some of the five types of “gifters” here – but will you recognize your own organization? Think back to when you were a kid – whose gifts did you want to tear open and which ones were guaranteed to be lame?

Cranky Old Grandpa. He doesn’t care what you want, because you probably don’t deserve anything anyway. Kids have it so easy these days and they’re all spoiled brats who have no idea what the real world is like.

These are the nonprofit staff who are bitter that they have to ask for donations and help at all. If people don’t understand their issues and support their work, it’s not the nonprofit’s fault – it’s because the audience is full of selfish idiots. In other words, nonprofit marketing is a waste of precious time they need to spend on real work, so why bother?

Cranky Old Grandma. Unlike Grandpa, she does think you deserve a gift, but like Grandpa, she really doesn’t care what you want, because she knows better. You are going to get an electric toothbrush if you are lucky, and a scarf she kitted if you aren’t. Either way, that present is going to be good for you, and you better like it.

“Cranky Old Grandma” nonprofits write newsletters that are full of articles about the organization, its activities, and its issues, with little regard for who actually reads the newsletter. In fact, they aren’t even sure who’s on the newsletter list, and it really doesn’t matter. They believe that they alone should decide the content of the newsletter, regardless of what the readers may be interested in, and that’s what they are going to provide.

Your Older Brother. He knows he is supposed to get you something, but he doesn’t want to put any thought or effort into it, so he is going to regift something he got for his birthday.

These are the nonprofit communicators who fill their publications with articles from other sources, with little original content, because it’s quick and easy and they want to check the newsletter off of the to-do list. Some of it may be helpful, but it’s a toss-up most of the time.

Mom and Dad. They know what you really want and also what you need. They give you a mix. You’ll get that hot new game you wanted, because they want you to be happy, but you’ll also get something you need, like socks and underwear.

“Mom and Dad” nonprofits are those who are sincerely interested in understanding their audience and try to speak to their interests and values in most of their communications, but they can’t quite let go of all of the organization-centered information – the typical “message from the executive director” column, for example, is still at the front of the newsletter.

The Cool Aunt. She asks what’s on your wish list, or asks others what you are into these days, and she gets it right every time.

These nonprofits know who are they communicating with and are constantly checking in with their audience, whether by talking to them directly or staying on top of larger trends. They regularly adjust the content of their communications to be relevant to their audience and what those people are interested in or concerned about at any given time. Their donors and supporters can tell that the nonprofit cares what they think and is grateful for their participation. And the donors and supporters love the nonprofit in return.

So which kind of gifter is your organization? Are the print and online publications your produce as part of your nonprofit marketing strategy and communication plan a real gift to your donors and supporters, or are they simply what you think they need or what you want to give them for your own selfish reasons?

Start working your way down on the continuum from Cranky Old Grandpa to the Cool Aunt, and by the time we come back around to this year’s holiday season, you’ll be the favorite nonprofit on everyone’s list. Need some help making that transition? Check out my nonprofit marketing training schedule.